COP27 took place from 6 to 20 November 2022 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Whereas last year’s COP26 featured a Transport Day and a Transport Declaration - which was amended to highlight the importance of active travel following intense pressure from advocacy groups – COP27 paid less attention to transport, and to the greater role walking and cycling must play in decarbonising transport.
The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), invited by the United Nations Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC), was present at COP27 not only to share best practice examples in promoting cycling cities, but also to add its voice as a founding member of the Partnership for Active Travel and Health (PATH), which saw several key initiatives launched on site.
Cycling cities showcased in the Action Hub
Since 2018, an interactive programme of events is delivered at every edition of the COP within the Action Hub, managed by the UN Climate Change secretariat. This dynamic space gives participants the opportunity to stage a variety of events relating to concrete climate action projects and initiatives. These events typically include talk-shows, special launches, games, interactive activities, educational programmes or digital demonstrations, all of which focus exclusively on or aim for climate action, while providing a voice to the audience.
As a signatory of the UN Sports for Climate Action Framework, the UCI was invited to deliver a session entitled “How to create a cycling city”, alongside the Institute for Transport & Development Policy (ITDP) on Solutions Day (November 17th). This interactive session helped the audience understand how a cycling city can be created using examples from the UCI Bike City Label, which harnesses the transformative potential of the sport of cycling, as well as the ITDP Cycling Cities campaign, which aims to bring 25 million more people near safe cycle lanes by 2025. The UCI and the ITDP explained how transforming a city's infrastructure, culture and urban planning strategy to strengthen the everyday use of the bicycle represents a recognised means of building more resilient, sustainable and active societies.
Practical examples of implementation from communities which have been successful in promoting cycling as a key transport mode were shared with participants. These included measures taken by Wollongong (Australia) - which received the UCI Bike City Label in 2021 and recently hosted the 2022 UCI Road World Championships – and the city of Jakarta (Indonesia), which represents one of the 28 cohort cities of ITDP’s global Cycling Cities campaign, which celebrated it’s one-year anniversary at COP27.
The session can be watched on demand here.
Active travel remains low priority and under-funded in the transport and mobility mix Over 400 organisations from 73 countries signed the PATH open letter calling on government and city leaders to invest more in walking and cycling to achieve climate goals and improve people’s lives.
Signatories to the letter came from a wide variety of organisations including those working for road safety, clean air, public health and public transport, as well as walking and cycling advocacy groups.
During the COP27, the letter was presented to representatives of governments from Egypt, Ethiopia, the Netherlands and Portugal. The ambitions of the letter, as well as the findings of PATH’s new report Make way for walking and cycling, were also shared and promoted by PATH members in a range of meetings, talks and official UNFCCC side events.
Sessions about active travel covered finance, gender, integration with public transport, the challenges and opportunities for African cities and more. New initiatives for active travel, that will help deliver on these ambitions were announced at COP27 by PATH partners including:
Training and research by the Walk21 Foundation and the Volvo Research and Educational Foundation, in collaboration with THE PEP (Transport, Health and Environment Pan European Programme ) on the development of the Pan-European Masterplan for Walking.
A call for an Active Mobility Fund by the Transport Decarbonisation Alliance, with seed funding from the Dutch Government announced by Minister Vivianne Heijnen.
The strength of commitment demonstrated from the signatories to the letter indicate the partnership will continue to seek to raise further awareness and unlock walking and cycling’s potential to accelerate the achievement of climate goals and other benefits, through greater prioritisation and investment, including through national transport, health and environment strategies. Next steps include working to strengthen inclusion of walking and cycling within Nationally Determined Contributions and Voluntary National Reviews.
“Enabling more people to walk and cycle safely is essential to reducing transport’s 27% share of carbon emissions and achieving the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, yet walking and cycling continue to lack priority in the transport and mobility mix and the wider climate agenda,” said Sheila Watson, Deputy Director of the FIA Foundation. “Our open letter on the occasion of COP27 was published to draw attention to this and to call for greater action on the part of governments and city leaders.”
UCI Advocacy and Development Manager Isabella Burczak said: “We are delighted that over 400 organisations from across the globe joined our call to action by signing this letter. This underscores how much support there is for prioritising and investing more in walking and cycling as one of the best solutions we have to achieve climate goals, improve public health and deliver a range of other societal benefits.”